Mara broke into the lowest archive at dawn.
Not physically.
The door opened for her the way everything always had—quietly, automatically, without resistance. That frightened her more than any locked gate could have.
The room beyond was small and windowless, lined with old hardware that hummed in uneven rhythms. No holograms. No modern interfaces. This place had been built before Witness Echoes became clean.
Before they became believable.
She placed her hand on the terminal.
The system didn't ask for authorization.
It greeted her.
WELCOME BACK, SUBJECT K-02
Mara's knees nearly gave out.
Files unfolded across the screen. Video logs. Medical scans. Neural maps overlaid with color-coded annotations.
A child's brain.
Her brain.
She watched herself sit in a white room, feet not quite touching the floor, electrodes threaded through her hair. She wasn't crying in the footage. That detail struck Mara harder than anything else.
The child looked… resigned.
"Overwrite sequence beginning," a voice said.
The child flinched anyway.
Mara turned away, bile rising in her throat.
She didn't need to watch the rest. Her body remembered what her mind had been forced to forget.
They hadn't chosen her because she was special.
They had chosen her because she didn't break.